India's Swadeshi Dilemma: Modi's Call vs Economic Reality

I am neither an enthusiastic supporter of Prime Minister Modi nor do I follow him blindly, but I keenly follow his politics since his days as the general secretary of the BJP. I know there is an army of admirers who think he is God’s gift to mankind and was born to make India great again; they vouch that he is the greatest orator India has ever seen. My opinion of him differs. I was never mesmerised by his speeches, finding them mediocre, lacking in substance, and full of rhetoric.

Like everyone, I was also wondering what he was going to say in his address to the nation on a lazy Sunday evening at 5 pm. Like everyone, I also thought there must be some pressing issue on which he wanted to take the country into confidence. Alas! It was his most boring and uninspiring address to the nation. I spoke to a few of his supporters and found I was not too off the mark in my assessment; they too were greatly disappointed.

The PM spoke about the GST and how greatly it would serve the nation, and that from now on, things of daily use would become cheaper. He, due to the unprecedented global situations and grave challenges of foreign policy, emphasised we all should proudly follow the path of Swadeshi. By “Swadeshi” he meant anything indigenously produced in India, by Indians and for Indians.

Atmanirbhar Bharat is the new rhetoric for him, which he wants everybody to chant. I am not sure if he is really aware of the rich tradition of Swadeshi and its legacy in India’s freedom movement. If he sees Swadeshi from the laconic prism of economic reform, then he is greatly mistaken. It will create more confusion and chaos and will send a disastrous signal to the world; it will discourage foreign investors, who are already showing disinclination to invest in India.

In terms of economic reforms, India under the BJP at the centre has already missed the bus. In 2014, after coming to power, the Modi government set the target of making India a manufacturing hub by 2022, with an increase in the manufacturing sector’s contribution to the GDP from the then 17% to 25%. It is 2025, and India has not moved an inch; rather, manufacturing’s contribution to the GDP has decreased slightly despite the hyperbolic ‘Make in India’ and ‘Vocal for Local’ campaigns. If a mindless demonetisation and the sluggish implementation of the GST killed the vast reservoir of the MSME needed to boost the manufacturing sector, the lack of conviction and vision are responsible for almost no growth in the manufacturing sector.

When policy is made more for the purpose of marketing than for implementation, disaster is the only end result. When the Indian economy is mortgaged to a top few big business houses, and competition is killed by deliberately promoting a few, then no big investor will risk investing in India, and the predatory presence of a few big guns will demoralise the entrepreneurship of brilliant skills. 

It is ironical that after a bloody conflict with China at Galwan, in 2020, when anyone in the opposition having any contact with China was called anti-national, India’s imports increased from $66.7 billion to $113.46 billion in 2024-25. Today, China is India’s biggest importer, with a massive trade deficit of $99.2 billion. It is a matter of public knowledge that China was actively supporting Pakistan during Operation Sindoor. In fact, Lt General Rahul Singh said on record that India was fighting two enemies on one border. After the ceasefire, China tried to damage India’s economic growth by hampering the supply of rare earth magnets and specialised fertilisers, which created a urea crisis at a time when farmers needed the fertilisers for the Kharif crop, to India and withdrew three hundred of its engineers from Foxconn’s Indian subsidiary, Yuzhan.

The PM’s call for Swadeshi should be viewed against how India’s dependence on China has increased manifold in the last few years, specifically in critical sectors like electric vehicles, semiconductors, memory chips, telecommunications and electronics. India, betrayed by the US, was left with no option but to stand with Xi Jinping during the SCO Summit. But can we trust China? This is the moot question at a time when China’s relationship with Pakistan is the strongest. Had the government projected a vision and devised the right policies, our dependence on China would have greatly reduced.

Now India is faced with an uncertain future. At one end of the spectrum is Trump, hell-bent on humiliating India with his open tariff war, and at the other end is China, about whom we can never be sure. And then the PM says, “Be proud, buy Swadeshi and sell Swadeshi.” Does it mean Indians should immediately stop buying anything remotely foreign, especially when the Indian market is full of Chinese products? Or should we stop using mobile phones and vehicles of foreign make or stop wearing clothes of foreign brands? 

The country needs clarity on this because we had a rich tradition of the creative Swadeshi movement in India, which became instrumental in India getting its independence. Bal Gangadhar Tilak was the first to moot the idea of Swadeshi as an instrument to revive patriotism among Indians after the division of Bengal. Vaibhav Purandare writes, “Tilak thus put forward the triumvirate of boycott, Swadeshi and national education as the mantra for a national awakening.” Inspired by Tilak, VD Savarkar bonfired foreign cloths in Poona on October 8, 1905. Later, Mahatma Gandhi turned this concept into a mass movement. Gandhi’s charkha is an iconic emblem of a creative energy which taught Indians to feel proud of what is Indian and break the shackles of the foreign rule.

But those were different times. The world was not so interdependent. Economies were not so badly entangled with each other. Today, our planet is like a global village, so intricately interconnected that it’s impossible for an individual or a nation to think and live in isolation. The Prime Minister has to spell out what he means by ‘Swadeshi’. Otherwise, it will create more confusion, and that will lead to chaos, and the economy will suffer more.

The writer is Co-Founder, SatyaHindi.com, and author of Hindu Rashtra. He tweets at @ashutosh83B 

Published on: Tuesday, September 23, 2025, 03:39 PM IST